Banner Drop: Remembering Ryan Ronquillo, 2 Years Later

On the two year anniversary of his death, family, friends, and supporters gathered to remember Ryan Ronquillo. Attendees placed flowers at the tree his car was against when he was gunned down outside of the Romero Funeral Home, by the Gang Unit of the Denver Police Department. Ryan was unarmed, attending the funeral of one of his best friends.

At the request of family, and as a gesture of solidarity, we dropped two banners on the fence facing the highway, which stayed up for two hours, until the time of Ryan’s death at 6:11pm on July 2nd. One read, “The Police are Denver’s Most Violent Gang. FTP” and the other read, “Justice for Ryan Ronquillo, Murdered by the Denver Police” with a picture of Ryan. There were many honks of approval, and many hugs and tears.

Ryan is another casualty of the ongoing class war and gentrification of Denver, enforced by the Denver Police Department. The Gang Unit is tasked with enforcing certain types of social affiliation, criminalizing crews of friends in communities that are poor, black, and brown, while they protect and encourage all kinds of clubs and gatherings of the white and affluent. This is one of the reasons you can have the legalization of marijuana, and see barely a change in the amount of black and brown residents who find themselves in the so-called criminal justice system for drug offenses. All this while white and affluent entrepreneurs from California, the Midwest, and the Northeast continue to move in record numbers and open weed shop after weed shop, with breweries, artisanal bakeries, yoga studios, and crossfit gyms following close behind.

We haven’t forgotten that often our crews of rebellious friends find ourselves facing off with gang unit pigs, watched and harassed as we attempt to live out in defiance of a world that destroys families with borders, cops, and prison cells. Our paths to this conflict might (sometimes) be different than those we find ourselves living and rebelling next to, but our enemies are the same.

We haven’t forgotten you Ryan, or the lives you touched in life and in death. Rest in Power.

For a world without cops, judges, borders, or prisons.

– some anarchists

Note from the editors: if you have any thoughts on Ryan, the DPD, or how the resistance in the wake of his death effected you, please submit it! We will happily publish it here,